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Webinar on “Women in Agri-startups"

Webinar on “Women in Agri-startups"

  • Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare organized a webinar on “Women in Agri-startups: Creating Value with Supply Chain Management”.
  • To commemorate 75 years of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Kailash Choudhry released an e-book depicting Success Stories of 75 progressive women farmers and women entrepreneurs.
  • The minister noted that women’s contribution to agricultural growth has increased dramatically.

Women and Agriculture

  • The agriculture sector in India employs 80% of all economically active women; comprise 33% of the agricultural labour force and 48% of self-employed farmers.
  • The Webinar on Women in Agri-Startups focused on:
  1. Enabling Women Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness
  2. Strategy and Schemes to support Agri-Startups in India
  3. Technology transfer to Startups for Commercialization
  4. Value Chain Management and
  5. Challenges faced by Agri-Startups Agripreneures.
  • With women predominating at all stages of the agricultural value chain viz pre-harvest, post-harvest processing, packaging, and marketing; it is critical to implement gender-specific interventions to boost agricultural productivity.

Steps taken by Government to support women in agriculture

  • The government has attempted to advance the agenda of ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Agriculture by:
  1. Earmarking funds for women under various schemes/programs and development interventions
  2. Introducing ‘pro-women initiatives’ to assist women in gaining access to all beneficiary-oriented components of various programmes.
  • The focus of government is on following aspects:
  1. Formation of women Self Help Groups (SHGs)
  2. Women Federations
  3. Women Farmer Producer Organisations; as well as capacity-building interventions
  4. Linking them to microcredit
  5. Improving their access to information
  6. Ensuring women representation in decision making bodies at various levels

Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana: Empowering women in agriculture

  • The Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP), a sub-component of the Deendayal Antodaya Yojana-NRLM (DAY-NRLM), focuses on improving and enhancing women’s existing conditions.
  • MKSP acknowledges the identity of “Mahila” as “Kisan” and strives to increase women’s competence in the area of agro-ecologically sustainable practices.
  • It has a clear mission to reach out to the poorest of the poor and expand or diversify Mahila Kisan’s current portfolio of activities.
  • MKSP focuses on encouraging smallholders to embrace climate-resilient agro-ecology, resulting in creating a pool of skilled community members.

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